Is the idea that the creature wearing the dress is an alleged man supposed to distract from the fact that the dress, regardless of who's wearing it, is atrocious? It just hangs there. The colors are ugly and the fabric looks cheap. But I guess if you're used to paying $2,000 for a studio apartment in New York, $890 dollars for a burlap sack isn't too shocking.

Is that supposed to be attractive to anyone in any way whatsoever? (it wouldn't be attractive on a woman, either).

Andy, as long as different sexes have different shapes, we're going to have different clothing. Unless you expect us to all be clothed in shapeless sacks or robes, but most of us like to see each other's shapes.

Well, the neutering of Manhattan is complete. Let me find my manzier to see if it shows lines when I wear it with this. Really, I see nothing wrong with it. Just add load of chainmail, a heavy iron vest, a sword, a helmet, and call me Sir Robin, and I think you've got something.

If women can wear pants, men can wear dresses. But why would we want to?

I have longed faced up to the fact that the laptop bag I carry to and from work every day is essentially a large purse. And the fanny pack I wear around my waist and sometimes sling over my shoulder is a small purse.

But a dress that you wear over pants so that you lose access to the pockets?

I suppose if I was going out on the town and wanted to deter pickpockets ...

Or was planning to spend all day hanging around the house ... It's more presentable than a bathrobe.

Pants optional, that's good.

Yes, $890 is a lot, but Wal-Mart or Target should be able to knock it off for $8.90.

A while back I saw a young man, kind of burly, medium height, long ponytail, wearing a sweater and those felt-type clogs, with socks, wearing a dark green plaid skirt, slightly full, below the knees. Kind of a hipster/grunge look. It worked on him.

In all of their towns there was noticed a class of men who lived like women, associated with them, wore the same dress, adorned themselves with beads, earrings, necklaces, and other feminine ornaments, and enjoyed great consideration among their companions. The want of an interpreter prevented us from ascertaining what kind of men they were, or to what office they were designed; all suspected however, a sexual defect or some abuse among those Indians.

I'm not saying "gosh, men used to wear skirts so what's the big deal"; I just think it's fun to note the historicism and arbitrariness of gender signifiers in fashion. (E.g. knee-length and mini dresses and stockings signify "woman" for us, but in centuries past this was quintessential masculine attire.) But those gender signifiers (in any particular historical period and culture) still signify!

And IMO there will always be gender signifiers in fashion, human nature being what it is. Andy speculates that "people in the future are going to look back with real confusion at a time when there was men clothes and women clothes"; but IMO this would only occur in a totalitarian society that enforced gender-neutral clothing.

After all, clothing/ fashion is (among other things) the plumage by which men and women attract the other (or same) sex. And androgynous clothing is itself attractive because of the existence (and efficacy) of those signifiers.

I'm a big fan of medieval and Renaissance male fashion myself. As a woman, I tend to be a pretty androgynous dresser, but my favorite "feminine" outfits definitely have something of the Renaissance man.

A while back I saw a young man, kind of burly, medium height, long ponytail, wearing a sweater and those felt-type clogs, with socks, wearing a dark green plaid skirt, slightly full, below the knees. Kind of a hipster/grunge look. It worked on him.

Sean Connery, in his prime...oh heck...anytime....could carry off that look.

No, I doubt Connery could carry off an actual women's skirt, slightly full, falling below the knee. It was wool, though. I maintain that the look hung together in a grunge way, perhaps mainly because the young man 'owned it' by not giving a hang what anyone thought :)

Althouse is anti-shorts on men, but what is the Althouse position on kilts? Manly display of muscular calves and knees, with a frisson of sartorial ambiguity on the question of underwear, or emasculated display of bare legs?

Most couples will use enhanced in-vitro conception where all harmful gene combinations are eliminated. Few, if any, will choose the combination of genes which result in homosexuality. There will still be gay people though: Religeous fundamentalists will reject this technology and so will sometimes have a homosexual child.